I've been wondering about the gun stores too. The thing is more ammo is being produced and the number of gun stores probably hasn't changed. So each gun store should be receiving more ammo now on average than in the past. There are more new gun owners and people panic buying ammo so inventory levels are down. So either gun stores here are making bank, or the mainland stores are somehow able to buy more ammo than the local dealers here.
Its also that there are stores that are "dealers" like the LGS who purchase ammo through distributors (like say Davidsons, RSR etc) and then there are stores that buy directly from the manufacturers (Vista Outdoors mainly). With Vista, I forget what the threshold annual sales amount was to apply for an account but memory points to in the millions. It seems like the Vista direct stores are getting ammo in more frequently, but the middlemen distribution points (Davidsons/RSR types) have been getting very little supply which then results in the LGS not being able to get ammo themselves. So in a way we (Hawaii) are a little too small of a market, but I think its more so that we don't really have a big chain store that has big inventory pull from Vista Group.
From what we've seen in the midwest, ammo supply has actually significantly improved the last two or so weeks. 556, 762x51, 40sw, and 45acp have all been regularly dropping pallets worth at the big retailer chains. Mostly Winchester brand, but recently Federal, Speer, and Blazer have been on the shelves also. The increased supply on the chain store shelves gives some hope that the distributors will begin to get ammo too that the LGS dealers will be able to access. Part of the reason why we've been holding off pulling together another pallet is because we've been hoping that that supply spigot opens up so prices go back down (and so we don't get stuck with premium priced sourced inventory).
On the manufacturing ammunition FFL side, the report I saw a couple days ago from a main component distributor was that inventory arrival was actually pretty good the last month. The vast majority of what they got went to backorders from the summer/fall, but this was the first newsletter in at least 6 months that mentioned that a dent was made in the backorders. Primers and powders continue to be on backorder with no new backorders being taken yet on most primer types.
In times of declared national emergency, which seems to be easy for the Swamp to do sometimes, the government can direct all ammunition manufacturers (and firearms makers) to sell what they produce to the government exclusively. That includes cartridges as well as individual ammo components.
The DoD has its own ammo factory to supply most of the military's needs which doesn't include the huge number of federal organizations that require agents to use firearms: DHS, IRS, ICE, etc.
So, if the gov't really wanted to put a damper on sales of ammo and guns, they could have done it at the beginning of the pandemic.
The more you know ...
Also... a not so fun fact about Hawaii SB523 (and its predecessors) which wants to require ammunition vendor licensing sneaks in there "that all firearms or ammunition in the possession and control of any licensee at any time of national emergency or crisis, as defined in section 134-34, may be seized and held in possession or purchased by or on the order of the governor until such time as the national emergency or crisis has passed, or until such time as the licensee and the government of the United States or the government of the State may agree upon some other disposition of the same."
Sure a year ago we all thought that such a national emergency would be quite rare... but it rings a different tone now.